I’m going to do a full write-up of the Sony Kando experience over the next few days (while also taking pictures around Stockholm, especially the metro stations) but wanted to share this one as a way of getting everything started.

Bixby Bridge in California’s Big Sur region is an absolutely legendary structure, it punctuates the incredible raw landscape of Big Sur and somehow doesn’t look out of place.

During the Kando Trip they did some astrophotography workshops out at Big Sur and I chose to go with the Bixby Bridge group.  I dreamed about capturing the Milky Way above the latticework underneath the bridge but alas we arrived at the same time as a significant marine layer of clouds.  While it killed our chances at a Milky Way that night (the group who went back the next night had unbelievably clear skies because of course they did haha) I was still able to capture an image I’m proud of.  The workshop instructor was light-painting the bridge throughout my exposure which not only illuminated the bridge but cast some cool shadows on the hillside behind it.  The sky ended up being kind of cool even with the clouds because I was shooting a long exposure, which gave the clouds a streaky, almost Aurora-like quality to them, and the brighter stars still found a way to peek through.  All that while a car happened to be driving up the road towards the bridge, providing some beautiful light trails which illuminated the foggy scene.  All in all I think it’s a winner so please enjoy this week’s picture of the week!

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For the photographers: this was a pretty tough night to shoot, I think this is the only frame I took that was even worth editing, but I’m happy with it.  I shot it with my Sony a7rIII and a 16-35 f2.8 G Master which I borrowed from Sony.  I shot at f2.8, ISO 6400, and the exposure time was 30 seconds.  In the middle of the exposure the instructor, Andy Best, started painting the bridge with his flashlight, which gave this image such a unique feel to it.

Despite the difficulty of the evening, this one wasn’t too hard to do in post, the toughest part was figuring out the crop.  If you have any questions please let me know!